College Application Essays

Palms, Passes, and PCR
They say the only rule of magic is to never tell the audience the secret of the trick. But Wu never cared about rules.
"There," he says, his eyes holding a roguish glint, "is that your card?"
Disbelief is supposedly a mental state. Yet for me it manifests physically. Shivers trace the slope of my shoulders, up my neck, to my cheeks. The room is suddenly warm, and I can feel my face flushing. My reality...

Supplemental Essay: Strong beliefs/principles

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Dartmouth Essay:
The timer buzzes insistently, signaling my turn to speak. What can I say? Silence. Nothing. "Do you need more prep-time?" drawls the judge, who is perched coolly on the desk across from me.
Finally, I let my voice fill the silence. "Judge, my opponents — they — you — they're arguing that — um —" I'm incoherent. I stop, consumed by the failure of the moment.
As a dedicated news junkie, I had initially imagined debate to be a contest of raw volume....

Supplemental Essay: “Why us” school essay

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Columbia Essay:
I want to devote my life to solving problems. At Columbia, I see a community uniquely committed to the challenge.
I love Columbia's dedication to undergraduate research. I hope to find my spot among the 400 research positions reserved just for undergraduates. I would love to engage in research in a SURF program to pursue a deeper understanding of biology.
In particular, I hope to work with the researchers at the Department of Systems Biology. The Department's High-Throughput Molecular...

Assigned Reading in the Past Year:
Short Stories
"The Gilded Six-Bits," Zora Neale Hurston; "How John Boscoe Outsung the Devil," Arthur P. Davis; "Exodus," James Baldwin; "The Goophered Grapevine," Charles Waddell Chesnutt; "Truant," Claude McKay; "The City of Refuge," Rudolph Fisher; "The Lynching of Jube Benson," Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Anthologies
A Century of the Best African American Short Stories, edited by John Henrik Clarke; The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, edited by Arnold Rampersad
Books
What Was African American Literature?,...

Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school

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What draws you to the fields you listed?
Entering kindergarten, I insisted (to my parents' great amusement) on donning a white lab coat as often as possible. At the time, of course, I had difficulty articulating exactly why, at five years old, I was certain that I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. Today, though I'm less precisely sure of that career choice, I still find biology fascinating. I'm rapt by its mysteries, its complexities; its harrowing diseases, its triumphs of...

Supplemental Essay: “Why us” school essay

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Cornell Essay:
I've spent much of my time in high school at the lab bench. Initially, my experience was driven entirely by intense curiosity. Something as complex as liver cancer cell signaling naturally pulls me in. It's an incredible challenge. I feel obligated to continue probing, searching, fighting for a deeper answer. Yet week after week, as I worked the cancer cells in my hands, I began to feel an intuition for the awful potential of these tiny enigmas. Cancer...

Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school

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UC Berkeley:
When I was younger, my parents read a book to me every night. We cycled through the bookshelf every couple of weeks, but we always returned to the books with the yellow covers, now warped by repeated use: Curious George.
The plot of each book is mostly identical. George is an unruly, lovable monkey who grows curious, does something mischievous, and gets in trouble. Yet, somehow, he usually emerges a hero. In "Curious George Goes to the Hospital,"...

Additional Essay Details:

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I submitted a research supplement (just an abstract) to Columbia, with an explanation of what my role was in the project.

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College Admissions Advice

What might make for a good “Why Us” essay topic at my school

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Be as specific as possible!!!! I can't stress this enough. These schools want to know why you want to attend there, not why you want to attend "generic good school." It's key to find very specific reasons you are attracted to a school ...

Recommended summer activities during high school and college

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RESEARCH! The only reason I got in where I did was my research experience. Research also broadens your perspective and exposes you to the world of academia. Universities want researchers because they possess the values that indicate tenacity, critical thinking,...

Why I ultimately chose my school

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Columbia's research prowess is really fantastic. But the most important thing to me is the fact that the student body is so diverse and...

What I’d change about my application process

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I would have FINISHED my essays much earlier. I had a tendency to start the essays right away...

Whether I used a private admissions counselor, and advice I received

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I did not use a private admissions...

List of schools I interviewed with and my interview experience

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I interviewed at Yale, Penn, Brown and Dartmouth. All of my interviews were a little bit stiff, perhaps with the exception of the Brown interview. I would say that my having done very extensive research about the SPECIFIC perks of each college (residential colleges at...

Why I declined other schools

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I have a lot of relatives (cousins; I was not an immediate-family legacy) who have recently attended Columbia. I I think they will be able to offer me guidance, and their families are wonderful people whom...

My advice about getting recommenders

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Find teachers who KNOW YOU, not just teachers you think are the ones colleges necessarily want to...

What set me apart from other applicants

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I'm certain it was my research experience and the abstract I submitted that clearly set me apart from other teachers. My research was objectively extremely strong, and...

How I chose schools to apply to

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For me, it was all about resources and research. I wanted a school with enough resources to support whatever I decide to do....

How to increase chances at my school

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I believe that what Columbia is looking for is for students who 1) get things done, and 2) bring something to the community. In other words, it's very important to indicate through your essays that you care about the work you produce, the organizations you are...

What I like about my school’s location and culture

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The culture at Columbia is remarkably collaborative, which is a nice change of pace from some of my experience in high school. Yes, some students are cagey, but on the whole, most students are happy to collaborate and share their experiences....

Most popular extracurricular activities at my college

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Many students choose to participate in debate (parliamentary), although you honestly will rarely see these people be outspoken about the activity. The newspaper (the Spectator) is extremely popular, although many folks joke about how time-consuming it can be. There are also many financial student organizations ...

What I’d change about my school if I were student body president

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I would make events management far easier. This is my #1 complaint about Columbia. If I'm a part of a club, and I want to make an event happen, by FAR the biggest bottleneck is trying to book space for...

My favorite course thus far, and why

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My favorite course so far at Columbia would probably be my Data Structures course. The professor is genuinely very funny, he...